United States v. State of California

Nguyen, Bennett, and Collins, reversing Judge Snyder's denial of a preliminary injunction and remanding with instructions to enter one. California's §10 orders non-uniformed federal officers to display agency plus a name or badge number during enforcement duties — and yes, the 'or' means the badge number alone carries the day. Six exceptions, plus a safe harbor for any agency that posts a written ID policy. Because the United States sued pre-enforcement and facially, it had to clear Salerno's no-set-of-circumstances bar; it did so without visible strain. The doctrine doing the work is intergovernmental immunity, not ordinary conflict preemption — there is no clashing federal statute anywhere in sight, just a state reaching for the federal steering wheel. The panel holds §10 overrides the federal government's power to decide whether, how, and when to identify its officers, so it fails in all applications. The district court erred by weighing how much the law burdened federal operations; that is the contractor standard, and there is no de minimis exception to direct regulation anyway. California's Johnson and Clifton backups both fail: this is no incidental turn-at-the-corner rule, and the officer's case-specific defense is not the United States' immunity. Winter is satisfied — enforcing an invalid law is irreparable harm, and the merged equities tip decisively. §2 and the No Secret Police Act rulings: nobody appealed those. And 'certain to succeed' still buys only a preliminary injunction, not a final judgment.